Wax On, Wax Off!

Perhaps the most memorable part of the original 1984 Karate Kid movie for me was the scene when the Kid, Daniel, first shows up to his new teacher’s home for a lesson in self-defense, and makes a sacred pact to to obey, no questions asked, in exchange for being taught karate. Pat Morita, as the teacher, hands Daniel a sponge to wash his collection of “Detroit” cars. Daniel is then is told to wax them, as well. Morita demonstrates the hand and arm motions to put the wax on the car, and then wipe it off. Wax on, Wax off. “Don’t forget to breathe!” I love this scene.

Of course, later we find out that the “wax on, wax off” motion is identical to a basic karate move used to block and attack. The Karate Kid learns karate by repeated practice performed doing what he considers menial work.

Way back when, students learned to write by practicing writing. With a thick pencil, then later, a thinner pencil, and eventually, a pen. By repeating the motions, we learned to write legibly, and without having to think too hard about how to make each letter.

Piano students have to practice scales and guitar students have to practice chords. That’s just the way it is. Acquiring a skill requires practice.

Learning how to safely forage for edible mushrooms requires knowing the difference between decurrent, attached and free gills, and gregarious and solitary growth habits, as well as how to make and interpret a spore print, among many other characteristics, to identify the spore colors. It scares the crap out of me when people show some software a picture to get an ID.

It also, as I finally figured out, requires being able to interpret the descriptions of the changing shapes of the caps, often from convex to flat to concave, as the mushroom ages. I drove myself nuts looking through five mushroom books trying to identify a giant white mushroom with a large concave, almost funnel shaped, cap. I finally found it in one of the books. As my studies continued, I learned that this mushroom had been misidentified and argued about by experts for decades. In any case, the convex shape wasn’t what finally helped with the ID. The convex shape was simply because these stunning, large white mushrooms were well into the spore spreading segment of their lifecycle. The convex shape seemed distinctive to me, because this is generally not the time when people capture images for identification guides. They generally capture the photos when the shrooms are young and fresh and colorful and convex. This is only one aspect of why it’s generally not recommended to teach yourself mushroom foraging. I did take to heart the adage that there are old mushroom hunters, and bold mushroom hunters, but no old, bold mushroom hunters.

Learning has to start with small skills, and mastery of the basics allows us to gain greater skills. This goes for such tasks generally characterized as “Thinking” as well as playing a musical instrument, swimming competitively, or practicing medicine, repairing cars, or gardening. As the practitioner acquires more basic knowledge of the objects and practices associated with a “body of knowledge,” it’s possible to be more creative with those data and skills, and accomplish more and more. The knowledge builds on and feeds itself.

What is going to happen to humanity if we don’t learn how to learn?

This is the scariest thing for me about SALAMI, or Systematic Approaches to Learning Algorithms and Machine Inferences, a more accurate description of what we call AI, or artificial intelligence.

Note that SALAMI and Bologna might be related.

It’s pretty ridiculous to call machine learning intelligence. Intelligence requires conscious awareness, and compassion. It must be grounded in empathy, resulting from awareness of the pains and fears and longings that all humans, most animals, and perhaps even plants, are subject to. It’s part of being alive.

Objectivity is scary, as well as having been proven mathematically and philosophically to be non-existent. I don’t want someone to give me objective advice. I want advice that’s RIGHT for ME! Part of wisdom is knowing how to GIVE advice that’s right for the person seeking the advice!

A professor at a large, accredited university recently told me that many of his current students truly think that they don’t need to know anything other than how to look something up on Google. They believe they will be able to Google their way through their engineering careers. He told me that the students would not want to read a long text book, that many of them don’t buy the short textbook he requires now. I replied that I was not going to pander to ignoramuses. The movie Idiocracy was hilarious, but it’s scary to contemplate the fact that that’s where we’re headed.

We need to wake up, and smell the roses and the coffee, or all we will have left to smell is shit.

OR

HERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A PHOTO OF SOME MANURE. BUT NONE OF THE IMAGE SERVICES ASSOCIATED WITH MY CURRENT SOFTWARES SHOW A SINGLE PHOTO OF A FARMER SHOVELING MANURE. ALL THE FARM PHOTOS ARE OF CUTE ANIMALS OR BEAUTIFUL GRAINS, FRUITS, ETC. 

WHY THIS CENSORSHIP ABOUT SHIT?????

This is the skatole molecule, according to Wikipedia, it’s what makes shit smell like shit. The Wiki article also shows a small image of human “poo” alongside a shot of elephant “POO.” Hmm, looks like precursors to ammonia and methane in there.

By Dschanz – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4834135